


In Jerusalem Next Year

by lynadyndyn



Series: In Jerusalem Next Year [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, I wrote this during season one, M/M, Pre-Series, Weecest, YEAH I SAID IT, and all the Lucifer and Michael stuff hadn't been established yet, anyway I wrote this when Supernatural was my favorite thing in all the world, so there's like guilt and pining and greek gods and stuff, this show really went off the rails, when Castiel was but a wee glimpse in Kripke's eye
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 10:41:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/848581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynadyndyn/pseuds/lynadyndyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam is going to make it through this year if it kills him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Jerusalem Next Year

It hits Sam this time while he’s zoning out in humanities seminar. He’s inking triangles in the margins of his second-hand copy of The Aeneid, ignoring the professor, who’s a guest-lecturer and sort of boring, when it occurs to him that he will probably never see Dad again. The thought is sudden and brutal and dagger-sharp, not attached to any particular emotion, just staggering in the enormity of the information. He drops his pen and it skitters off the desk and rolls onto the floor. Sam fumbles more than he should picking it up.

Usually there’s some preamble to these obvious, dumbass revelations, like, oh, thinking about Dad or even Dean, but sometimes they sneak out of the shadows like this. Never seeing Dad again isn’t like never seeing the sun again because Dad was never warming or nourishing, but Sam lacks the proper metaphor otherwise. Maybe finding out that universe has been contracting all along instead of expanding. Something like that.

Of course, Dad wouldn’t give a shit if someone told him the galaxy would eventually crash in on his head. Dean even thinks they faked the moon landing, or at least he keeps saying that to piss Sam off.

Last night Sam had scribbled next to the passage they’re reading today ‘Anis says to ddo: even if i wnted 2 stay, id leave.’ He lets the drone of the lecture close in around him, breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth, makes himself a little dizzy with oxygen so he won’t feel much else. Missing Dad comes and goes like waves of a concussion. Dean is always there, like an infection, like how stitches sometimes throb until they’re taken out.

But he makes it through class and out of class and again, like always, he’s pretty sure he’ll be okay.

He eats dinner sort of in a haze, picking up a bagel from the dining hall and taking it back to his dull white room. He’s more or less better a few hours after that, because he’s more or less absorbed in his polisci reading, which he likes a lot more than anything for IHUM. Sam hears the other first-years call it a bullshit requirement. He tried to disagree at first because everything about college should be scrubbed shiny and fascinating, but the more he slogs through Virgil the more it feels like a waste of time. A baseline is throbbing next door, and Sam idly taps his feet to it as he tries to underline important facts about Brazilian AIDS policy before his pen runs completely out of ink.

There’s a knock and Sam swings up from his seat to answer it. This happens all the time so he’s already saying before he opens the door, “The party’s-”

It’s the girl from down the hall, three doors over, the one with the hair. She’s looking at him with wide eyes, confused.

“Next door,” Sam finishes lamely. Her name is maybe Amy or Jessica and she sits two rows up from him in his American Revolution class. Sam likes to watch the slope of her shoulders. He scratches his neck. “But you, you live here too, so. You probably already knew that.”

She pauses a moment, taking a mental step back from the big pile of awkward he just dumped on her feet. “You’re Sam, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, um, I’m really sorry to bother you. But do you have any extra ink cartridges?”

Sam doesn’t have a computer. “My printer broke three weeks ago. I’ve been sort of living in the Mac lab since then.”

“Macs?” She wrinkles her nose. “Ew, PC pride on the east side.”

No one in Sam’s entire life has ever said anything like that to him. “I don’t think the administration will be all that thrilled if we start a gang war in Wilbur Hall.”

“Guess we should declare a truce then.” She blows her bangs away from her face and Sam can actually feel his arrhythmic heart-pattern, a-bum-bum. “I just ran out of ink printing out that essay on the Stamp Act and I thought, maybe… but I guess it’s a walk to the computer lab for me.”

“Sorry.”

“Thanks anyway. And sorry about your printer.”

He barely sits down before there’s another knock on the door. It’s her again, looking apprehensive. “Okay, so this is a huge favor and I’m a total retard. But it’s getting kind of dark and even though I know the campus is safe, I come from a really small town so it makes me nervous walking alone at night, and you probably have stuff to do but you’re like nine feet tall, so I was wondering if you could walk me over there. I would really appreciate it.”

Sam thinks of her as the girl with all the hair because it’s the biggest thing about her, a pale color, thick and wavy. She has soft cheekbones like a Flemish Madonna, and she’s smiling the smile of every milkfed Midwestern May Day Queen he’s ever met. Sam thinks she’s not Dean’s type. Dean might leer at the cheerleaders, but he pursues the brunettes with loose curls. Sam would find him in bathrooms and basements with tall, flat-chested drama stars who had bony features and long frames they carried with a gawky, aristocratic grace. Sam does not let himself think about this very often, and when he does he makes sure not to think about it for very long.

He says, “Just let me get my coat.”

**

Her name is Jessica and it turns out she’s not from the Midwest but a tiny suburb of Boston. She’s pretty sure she’s going to go be a psych major, and she chose Stanford in part because she has family in San Francisco and loves the city. She likes school a lot so far, although it’s more work than she was expecting and the food in the dining hall sucks.

This is where Sam made critical mistakes in his first few months, where he would say something about the dining hall being amazing, there are vegetables every night and dessert and meat you can readily identify. And then he’d get that blank hard-focused stare, mottled with distaste as comprehension crept in, and Sam would shrink back into himself again, cut off from the conversation as if by a knife.

Sam thought early on that maybe since most of his classmates weren’t trustfund babies, since a lot of them even came from working-class backgrounds and got to college on scholarship and work-study, he could, if not relate to them, at least fit in, conform to the general mold. But none of them had ever known someone who had never been to the dentist, who had had to rip up their textbooks for fuel when the temperature dropped below freezing, who could and did fit everything they owned into a hefty bag. It went beyond demons and dead mothers; all the little unspoken intimacies of stability, tucked like silk pillows into the crevices of eking out a life, that Sam had only seen out of the corner of his eye on television and in high school were now startlingly impossible to catch, to understand.

Dean called it middle class because he didn’t know the world bourgeois. He didn’t talk about it much, but he always resented that in the people around them. Sam couldn’t - not them, anyway. Owning a house wasn’t aberrant behavior if they were the only three people in town living out of a motel. It was simple logic Dean never seemed to understand. It drove Sam crazy, how Dean never really got how the outskirts were not where they inherently belonged, that their life was a brand new chapter of the Winchester saga and Dad was the only author.

“Thanks again,” Jessica keeps saying. “I hate to drag you away from your work.”

“It’s okay,” he says. “Just boy, this neighborhood? I’m sorry I left my Glock in my other pair of jeans.” He left all his guns with Dean, and even though he meant it as a joke he’s still surprised when she laughs.

“Shut up,” she says airily. “I know it’s not that dangerous, but it can get creepy and… do you hear that?”

He does, now that she mentions it, and Sam is furious with himself in Dad’s voice for not picking it up earlier before he remembers he doesn’t have to care. “Yeah, kinda.”

It’s a low, hollow sobbing, definitely human but in a sort of shock he has grown to associate with a rush of panic. He says, “I think we should keep walking.”

But Jessica is already moving towards the noise and Sam, painfully aware of his lack of weapons and the presence of a civilian, has to go after her.

It’s nothing so bad, a girl beneath a tree. She is curled up with head lolled on top of her knees, batting at the air around her head and weeping like she has long since given up.

“Hey. Are you all right? Is everything okay?” Jessica crouches down next to the girl, her voice quiet but respectful, like she’s approaching a wounded animal. Sam is struck suddenly by a bolt of the first real desire he’s felt for her.

The girl looks up wildly, brown hair falling in hanks around her red, puffy face. Her eyes dart from side to side and up, Sam notices. Up as well. “I… what? I’m sorry. Can’t you…? No, no, of course you can’t see. That, that’s good, that’s all right. I better go. I’m sorry.”

“Wait,” Sam says. “Do you need us to walk you home? Is something wrong?”

Even in her state, the girl rolls her eyes at him. She has the right; it was flimsy question. The girl looks like a junky, literally wasted, like she’s been stripped of the essential parts of herself and now is only strung together out of sinews and grief.

“I’ll…I’ll be fine,” she says, a little more composed now. “I’d better… better just go. It’s nice of you to offer but someone,” her throat works a little. “Someone’s waiting for me. Goodbye.”

And she’s off, in the direction of the parking lot.

“Hey, wait!” Jessica calls, taking a step or two. She gives up when the girl just runs faster. She turns to Sam, shaking her head with an expression a lot like regret. “That was…”

“Yeah,” Sam says, trying not to think about what exactly that was. “We should get going.”

**

Jessica had gone with him but insisted they call campus police about the girl, and the rest of the walk was quiet until they found a phone. Now Sam is in bed staring at the ceiling, the last fight running through his head like crappy pop. He can’t remember all the particulars now, but the bruise-deep ache of impact still hasn’t faded.

Sam forgot to pick up that year’s varsity jacket so the school had mailed it to their motel. Dean caved instantly, three years worth of obfuscation and promises and lies as elaborate as latticework crumbling under one of Dad’s looks and a Son, what’s going on? Sam was in the room too, helpless as Dean explained (grudgingly, too ashamed to look at Sam, you had to give him that) that he had not actually been giving Sam extra training sessions after school three or four days a week. That he had just been covering for all of Sam’s after school activities – soccer, model UN, the math club

(“You’re a mathlete? I should have seen this coming,” Dean had snorted in the dark, tracing Sam’s shoulderblade. “We didn’t tape your stick figures to the refrigerator or something, and you lash out and overdose on geek. It’s tragic.”

“Bite me,” Sam had said, squirming, and Dean did, hard.)

in all nine of the high schools they had attended, where Sam had done everything but play a musical instrument because he couldn’t risk bringing it home. Dad ignored Dean except as a narrator, staring at Sam, who could only keep his hands clenched, his chin raised, his shoulders straight and radiating defiance because Dad was waiting for him to crack and Sam would, in that moment, honestly have rather died.

Dad had been angry at both of them, but he recognized Dean’s motives for what they probably were: an effort to keep the peace. Sam, he came down on like the Old Testament God. For being a liar, for being irresponsible, for not caring about his family, for putting his brother in this position, for wasting his time on bullshit.

It’s not bullshit Sam had kept insisting, mulishly. His frustration which was limitless, most days, an ocean boiling under his skin, always translated as short-sighted and petty to Dad, but Sam tried. There was a life outside of hunting, or should be. He just wanted to fit in. He just liked soccer, for chrissake, other parents gave a shit about their children’s hobbies. But John tore through all of his excuses like paper with his goddamn mantra of loyalty and evil and mom until Sam snarled, “you know why, Dad? You know why? Because I’m fucking tired of your stupid fucking crusade and you don’t get accepted with a full scholarship to Stanford if you don’t have extra-curricular activities, that’s why.”

Sam can still feel the silence like a yawn. It’s etched into his bones now. The memory of it sings him to sleep and back awake again.

It was Dean, not Dad, who looked crumpled and brittle at the revelation. Sam had been keeping the secret for months, but he still wasn’t sure if Dean had known. He still isn’t.

Sam had expected more screaming. Judging from the expression on Dad’s face, maybe a punch, although it would have been the first time John Winchester had ever raised a fist to either of his children in anger. But instead there was just a thunderstorm sense of expectation, undispelled electricity in the air.

Until Dad sank down heavily on the edge of the crappy motel bed, hands on his knees, head bowed just enough for Sam to see the tension in his shoulders. And he said, “You can’t go on like this. It’s tearing this family apart. You can’t have it both ways, Sammy. Either you’re with us or you’re not. Ours isn’t the sort of business you can do with half your heart. If you don’t want to be here, there’s no place for you. You walk out that door and you stay gone. There’s no coming back.”

Dean had frozen at that and Dad was hunched dark and still, figures out of a tableau. The only thing really still in the room was Sam’s lack of options, laid out neatly on the floor. So he left them there when he went.

Dean trailed him to their room. Sam was expecting another scene, but Dean just stood in the corner and watched him pack, eyes like lake water, jaw set tight. But when Sam swung his duffel onto his shoulders, Dean called out in a sandpaper voice, “Wait.”

He opened the closet, opened a hidden compartment he had carved into the bottom of the drawer, pulled out cash. He pressed the wad of money into Sam’s palm. “That tablejockey gig you had paid shit, man. Not enough for a bus ticket.”

“Dean, I…” Sam had been saving for months and this had to be all Dean had on him. But Dean’s hands were shaking on top of his, just slightly, and his brother was the most serious and the least substantial Sam had ever seen him, hungry and haunted with a muscle working in his throat. If Sam had ever been going to back out it would have been then, with Dean looking for an excuse to hold his hand and giving him signals he couldn’t begin to interpret.

But instead he said, “I’ll call when I get there.”

Dean let him go, clapping his shoulder once, painfully. “Don’t. Not for a while.”

Later Sam found a silver knife and a vial of holy water in his jacket pocket he didn’t remembering taking.

He couch-hopped for a couple weeks before the semester started, steering clear of where he knew Dad and Dean would be. He walked the three miles to the Greyhound station carrying his stuff. No one was there to see him off.

Sam hasn’t called yet. Neither has Dean.

**  
He wakes up the next morning with a crick in his neck, a hard-on and the oddly peaceful understanding that the girl he and Jessica saw last night is going to die if she isn’t dead already. He takes care of the wood in the tiny stall shower, his mind playing sleepy white noise. Sam gets dressed, towel-dries his hair, swings by the dining hall because there’s not enough distance between him and his growth spurt to forget always being hungry, and in a weird, dissociated kind of fugue goes to the library to check out the local obituaries. A half hour later there are no leads and Sam is late to class.

He has been a lot of things in his life, held emotions clear and burning in the crucible underneath his closed eyelids for as long as he can remember, but loneliness is new. Sam had taken for granted that no matter how angry Dad made him or how obnoxious Dean could be, they were always there, ready with lectures and stories and rhyming games with dirty words. His conversation with Jessica last night was the longest he’s had with anyone since coming to California.

She asked him where he came from and he wanted to tell her I wasn’t what my family wanted. I should be angry about that, I should never forgive them. I am and I don’t, but these are strange days, foggy empty days.

But he didn’t say that. It didn’t even answer her question.

Sam blows out a sigh, folds up the newspaper carefully because even when you’re angry you should be careful with information and heads for class.

Part of him had always assumed Dean, at least, would call.

**

When Sam was twelve, Dean walked in on him jerking off in the bathroom. At fifteen, sixteen, it would have been an unpardonable breach of privacy, but then the whole business was new enough to Sam that he just scrambled to cup himself, staring at Dean with pleading mortification.

It had clearly been an accident on Dean’s part, judging from the fast flicker of expressions that crossed his face. But even on the worst days Dean was nothing if not a good big brother, and he settled on smirking amusement. “Hey, Sammy! Guess you discovered the old sausage, huh?” Dean raised his eyebrows. “Although in your case it’s more of a cocktail wienie…”

Sam threw the shampoo bottle at his head and missed. “Get out!”

Dean held up his hands placatingly. “Okay, okay, I’m going. But maybe next time you might want to invest in some candles, a little moodlighting…”

“Get out!”

“I’m gone.” And it could have just been left at that, but on his way out the door Dean glanced over again, barely anything at all except he was smiling like when he beat his old target shooting record with the .45 or Dad let him drive the Impala, smiling like he had earned something.

Dean closed the door, and Sam came nearly as soon as he curled his fist around his cock again, biting his lip on a tiny little moan.

It might have just been a matter of time, after that.

**

Between classes and notes and one seven page paper, Sam reads the news and checks obits for six days. On the seventh research becomes unnecessary. Her name was Emily Papusikos, she was a sophomore communications major, and her body washed up on Alcatraz early in the morning. It’s the lead story of the Stanford Daily.

Sam goes the memorial service. It’s well-attended; according to the article Emily was the daughter of a local doctor. There are other things in it too, a peppering of loss and survival Sam reads like old code. They lead him back to the library, to news articles, a hack into the school’s medical records, more obits. The librarian doesn’t bat an eye when he asks for a copy of The Oresteia after five hours on the computer, which is one of the nice things about college.

The service is held at one of the reception spaces on campus, and at the head of the room Sam can see a taller, thinner Emily in close formation with an older man and woman – cousin, aunt, uncle. Friends might know more, but extended family would be less suspicious of questions, less hysterical all around. Sam, doing his best to look like he’s meandering, heads over to them.

But he sees Jessica by the buffet table, studying a plastic plate laden with cherry cobbler in her hand. He stops, can’t help staring, and by the time he gets it together enough to try to sneak past her she’s spotted him, giving him a smile that’s as good as a wave over. So Sam practices looking polite and joins her.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.” Sam rubs his hands on his khakis, using the hushed near-whisper he’s perfected at a hundred stranger’s funerals. “Paying your respects?”

She shrugs, toying with her dessert. “Yeah. The article in the paper said she jumped Wednesday night.” Jessica looks somber but not pensive or upset. Sam decides he likes this about her, that she can be respectful of death without being shocked by it. “We could have been the last people to see her alive. Coming just seemed like the least I could do, you know?”

“We didn’t know what was going to happen. It’s not your fault.” Which is true, the way he phrased it.

She shrugs again, looks up at him. Her hair is pulled back neatly, swept up, and Sam wants to touch it. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Sam laughs awkwardly and a little too loud, feeling like a jackass. Jessica bites her lips, looks down, looks back up, fidgets with her fork. “Look, I know this is probably a really bad time, but if you wa-”

“I’m going to say something to the family,” Sam smiles like an accountant. “But later if you want to talk…”

“Uh, yeah,” she says, a little too brightly. “Yeah, that would be nice. Um. Later then.”

Sam squeezes his eyes shut tight once his back is turned away, taking a deep breath, readjusting his expression as he makes his way towards the family.

He shakes their hands in descending order, uncle, aunt, cousin, firm grip, looks directly in their eyes but not for too long. “Hi, I’m Sam Winchester. I had a class with Emily this semester, and I just wanted to say how sorry I am for your loss. I wish I could have gotten the chance to know her better.”

The cousin lingers with his hand and the uncle nods, and Sam is in. This was always his specialty. John was too intense and Dean always came off as mildly skeevy, but Sam could be soft-spoken and sincere as he tip-toed around grief, turn an interrogation into something almost like therapy.

“What class?” the aunt asks.

“Marketing,” Sam hazards, but from her lack of reaction she must not know Emily’s course load either and had just been making conversation.

“Thank you,” the cousin says.

“It must be an even worse blow,” Sam adds. “Considering what happened to her parents.”

They share a brief, careful look, and that’s everything he needs. That’s checkmate.

The aunt says, “What happened to Bill was… a tragic accident. And Emily’s mother was always very… unstable. Sometimes these things are genetic.”

Sam tucks his hands into his pockets. “Yeah. Sometimes they are.”

***

The sea-change happened when Sam was about fifteen. If there was an exact moment he can’t remember it, just a vague sense of watching Dean and Dad horsing around, goofy with endorphins after surviving a run in with something or other, and realizing that he was never going to grow into this. Whatever bridge he kept halfheartedly building towards Dad’s vision of him was never going to make it to the other side. There was, to his surprise, no resignation or terror in the insight, just an unfocused liberation. He didn’t have to like living this way because most people wouldn’t. Suddenly the flaws weren’t his, they were Dad’s, and the world was giddy with possibilities.

Fifteen was the year his fights with Dad turned vicious, when Dean started giving him looks that were halfway between bewildered and disappointed, when Sam got to skip the occasional hunt out of sheer bullheaded stubbornness. It was also when he shot up like a weed – six inches before November. None of his clothes fit and he was always hungry, neither of which improved his overall mood.

The growth spurt also meant night pains, sometimes so bad he couldn’t sleep or woke up crying. And Dean, a good brother always, always, bitched about how Sam could turn into a giant beanpole freak but still act like a little girl and climbed into bed with him like when they were little, rubbing his arms and humming gently enough Sam could feel the vibrations against his neck.

It didn’t happen the first night, maybe the fourth or fifth, but elbows bumped and legs tangled and erections rubbed against each other clumsily enough to be an accident. Sam learned the changeable taste of his brother’s mouth: toothpaste, soda, spareribs, sometimes just wet, like spring, which he liked best. It didn’t happen every night and there was no discernable pattern for predicting when it did. But it became more frequent as they grew older, more of an event as Sam began to explore and Dean let him.

It was simultaneously something they could never talk about and just another part of their personal mythology. The two of them had always woven a cocoon of secrets over themselves as fortification against the outside world: Dean snuck into their room after midnight, grinning and dopey, Sam cried at the end of To Kill a Mockingbird, they took turns stealing candy and beer from convenience stores and Wallmarts. They had always been confidants even when they weren’t friends, curled up in the back seat and speaking in private kid languages when John was in his darker moods. Look out for your brother was Dad’s cardinal rule of family, and maybe Sam thought this was a natural progression, the inevitable conclusion of Dean taking care of him. Maybe he wasn’t thinking very much at all.

When Sam got the early admission letter from Stanford he read it over eight times and hid it in the lining of his jacket. Three days later Dean reached for him with a familiarity of expectation Sam hadn’t realized alarmed him, and he stepped back from Dean’s hand.

“I don’t want to do this anymore.” There was a hard press of air in Sam’s chest, the weird recklessness of not knowing if he was telling the truth.

Dean had seemed surprised more than anything at first. Said, “Dude-” but stopped as he looked at Sam, who was tense with adrenaline, before his expression solidified into something fiercely stony, less angry or hurt than cynical.

But all he said was, “Whatever, Sam.” in a voice that didn’t mean it at all.

Dean was never a fan of confrontation or maybe he just thought it was just another of Sam’s phases, but they never fought about it or even alluded to it again. The first night they slept in different beds again Sam had a dream about their mother he barely remembered when he woke up.

**

Two days later, Sam’s woken up by the phone. The dayglow of his clock swims in front his eyes for a second before registering 5:34 like a magic eightball. Sam gropes to find the receiver, voice gravelly with sleep, “hello?”

There’s no answer for so long Sam reaches to put the phone back. Then he hears someone clearing their throat and an almost uncertain, “Sam?”

Sam isn’t aware of sitting up but he’s tangled in the phone cord. “Dean?”

There’s a weird sort of static on the other end. Cell phone maybe. “Yeah, man. It’s me.”

Sam swallows a couple times, looks at the clock again, scrubs a hand through his hair. “Dean, man, you… Is everything okay?”

Dean snorts. It’s not a nice sound. “Stanford admissions must not be sticklers for a big vocabulary, huh? Yeah, Sammy, everything’s fine. Couldn’t be more peachy.”

“Then why are you… it’s not even dawn here.”

“Yeah, I know.” A slam from the other end and Dean’s talking faster now. “I just wanted to give you the heads up about a case.”

“You what?”

“We shouldn’t have a bad connection. You’ve been reading the papers, right? Then you know… ah, there we go.”

The doorknob twists, but it’s locked. Sam hears a noisy sigh, and then a knock. And then another one, because he’s still in bed, staring, because his eyes haven’t adjusted to this grainy pre-dawn world and apparently the rules are different here.

But he gets up and answers it because Dean has always been a force of nature in Sam’s universe, high pressure and low pressure winds immutably convening, and there are some laws you just can’t change.

Of course it’s Dean, larger than life but shorter than Sam, grinning a grin he doesn’t know what to make of. He’s wearing worn jeans and a leather jacket Sam hasn’t seen before.

“Hi,” Sam says, stupidly. It’s not even six. He hasn’t seen his brother in five months and he’s in boxers, an undershirt and old-man socks.

“Hey,” Dean says. “You planning on letting me in?”

Sam steps aside and Dean lets the door swing shut behind him as he looks at the room – blank walls, yellowing paint over brick, an abandoned cot shoved into the corner. To an outsider the arrangement must look temporary. “Don’t you get a roommate?”

“They never sent a replacement.” Dean raises an eyebrow and Sam clarifies, “The first one joined a frat.”

“Who would have dreamed he’d want to move,” Dean says, picking at where the paint is peeling. A spike of anger flares up in Sam’s abdomen; he’s been here long enough to ignore the plainness, remember that this place is home. But Dean has switched his examination from the room to his brother, fidgety and like his eyes aren’t big enough to fit him all in. He nods to himself a little, jerkily. “You look good. They must be feeding you right here.”

“Yeah, I…” Sam swallows. “Where’s Dad?”

“Do you really care?”

“Of course! You think I don’t…” Sam sighs, crossing his arms over his chest. “He isn’t hurt or anything?”

“You know Dad,” Dean says vaguely. “Always landing on his feet.” Dean is restless, not quite pacing but slipping into a modified boxer shuffle. “But we found this in the morning paper sweep.” Dean fishes into his pocket, smacks Sam in the chest with battered newsprint.

Sam peers down. “Emily Papusikos.”

“Twenty years old. Sophomore at,” Dean flicks Sam in the chest. “Stanford University. Jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge last week after two months in psychiatric care. Doctors believe her symptoms indicate schizophrenia largely because of her hallucinations of-”

“Winged women.” Sam pushes Dean’s hand away, not very hard. “Being chased and tortured by monsters with wings. Furies.”

“Possibly harpies,” Dean says agreeably, a new spark to him now. “Maybe some form of lower level demon. So you’ve been checking up on-”

“Furies can only be seen by someone who’s killed a family member,” Sam says. “Who’s shed their own blood, you know, metaphorically. They torment the murderer, shrieking, attacking them constantly, forcing them to remember what they did, until they just go crazy. Usually the intent is to get them to kill themselves.”

“And Emily’s mom slit her wrists a few months ago…”

“Right.” The mattress creaks when Sam sits down. “Just after her dad died in some sort of kitchen accident. It sounds like things weren’t great at home growing up either. There were fourteen separate reports of domestic abuse in the Papusikos residence in ten years, and Emily’s medical record shows her arm’s been broken in three places. She and her mom had even checked in to a woman’s shelter for a little while a few years ago, but-”

“They keep coming back to Daddy,” Dean says, swinging to the beat of this. “Until one day they finally can’t take it anymore and snap. Maybe it’s self-defense. The police have been itching to arrest the bastard for years, so they don’t exactly do a thorough investigation when he falls down the stairs. Not that it really matters because a Fury smells patricide in the air…”

“They go after the mother first, drive her to suicide.” Sam looks down at his lap. How many weeks had the Fury been after her, to reduce her to that hopeless sodden despair? “Then they find Emily.”

“Theory’s good enough for government work,” Dean says. He looks more cheerful now. “You’ve been-”

“It seems like a pretty open and shut case to me,” Sam says. “If Emily’s dead, the Fury’s moved on.”

Dean plops down next to Sam on the bed, twists his body around so he can prop his feet on Sam’s desk. “You know what they say, Sammy. An untested theory’s worth its weight in exactly shit. Do we know if any other family members were involved in William Papusikos’ death?”

“I couldn’t get my hands on the police reports.” Sam ignores Dean and his triumphant little smirk. This doesn’t mean what Dean thinks.

“There could be someone else involved. Either at the scene or helping them cover it up – Furies aren’t exactly big on the distinction between killer and accomplice. Besides, they aren’t the only things with wings out there and most of the others are a hell of a lot less friendly.” Dean stands up, looks expectantly at Sam, enthusiastic and heartbreaking as a puppy.

Sam makes himself at least look his brother in the eye. “Dean, I’m not coming.”

The bounce trickles out of Dean’s posture, leaving him somewhere between casual and predatory as he leans against Sam’s dresser. “That so, huh? Why not?”

The question is only slightly more surreal-made-for-TV-movie than Dean’s presence itself. Dean stands out in his room like a primary color. “I have class.”

“Skip it.”

“I’m not going to skip class.”

“What, you got a midterm or something?”

“Yes,” Sam lies.

“Oh. Well, in that case… skip it.”

“Look,” Sam says, knowing Dean is going to think he sounds exasperated and whiny. “You don’t understand.”

“You’re right,” Dean cuts him off, and Sam can’t help but look up because he’s only heard this stone-cut edge to Dean’s consonants the handful of times Dean has been genuinely angry at him. “I don’t understand, I sure as fuck don’t understand you. You don’t want to go save some lives? You don’t want to help me and Dad? What about this,” his gesture takes in the empty room, “is worth more than family?”

And suddenly Sam is just tired, the four hours of sleep he got catching up to him, the understanding that Dean left Dad and drove god knows how many miles just to start this fight. He ended things with Dad. Him and Dad are dead and buried, the rift between them at long last official and cauterized into finality. But Dean had taught him how to make snowflakes out of construction paper, given him Tylenol behind Dad's back and snuck him into bars on Saturday nights. Dean has been a big ‘maybe’ around the edges of Sam’s California life, and Sam’s been hoping - despite himself sometimes - that he hadn’t driven Dean away.

But now the whites of Dean’s eyes catch the half-light and he’s helium-stuffed on injured superiority, and all Sam wants to do is burn this bridge. Burn it right down to the fucking ground.

“Oh fuck you,” he says.

It has the desired effect. Dean shouts, “Goddammit, Sammy!” and kicks his computer chair across the room. Sam jumps off the bed, which Dean interprets as an attack and lunges forward to meet him, grabbing and pushing at Sam’s shoulders, arms, chest. Sam’s shoving back and it’s the prelude to a fight, except suddenly Dean is holding Sam’s wrist, not even hard. Dean brings it to his forehead, drops his head to press it to the back of Sam’s hand, and the energy snuffs out of the room like a match.

“God, Sammy.” Dean sounds parched and fervent and aching, like Sam is the end of a pilgrimage.

Sam swallows, flexes the fingers of his other hand. Dean’s skin feels just a little clammy and the watercolor dawn light is seeping into the room from the cracks between Sam’s blinds.

“Dean,” he says. Maybe he meant it as a warning but that’s not how Dean takes it and Sam doesn’t stop him.

They wrestle each other onto the bed and the mattress complains. Dean pins him down, straddles him, kicks off his boots and shucks off his jacket but doesn’t bother to get rid of his shirt and just shoves his hands up Sam’s. They’re kissing a lot, which they’ve never done before, open-mouthed, wet and frantic. Sam’s hand molds to the back of Dean’s neck and his mouth moves to Dean’s cheek, his jaw, the indentation above his lip, sucking with just a little teeth.

Dean bats at his hand when Sam won’t let him move away, mouths down Sam’s neck and bites Sam’s shoulder through the cotton. He’s murmuring something, ‘let me’ or ‘look at me’ soft and hypnotic the way he used to sing Dream On when Sam couldn’t sleep, slowly enough for a lullaby, and Sam groans, “yeah, yes, oh god” like it’s the chorus.

Dean yanks down Sam’s boxers before his mouth has halfway made the trip. He spends so much time sucking on the jut of Sam’s hipbone Sam goes a little crazy, spitting curses and pounding his heel into Dean’s calf. “Do it already, you fuck, just fucking do it.”

“Hold your freaking horses,” Dean says, which should be chillingly unsexy except Dean’s breath puffs over his cock, and Dean sounds so relaxed, so much like he does when he’s happy, that Sam has to turn his head and bite down hard on the pillow.

There’s not much waiting after that. Dean wraps one hand around the base of Sam’s dick, flirts his tongue over the head before sucking him down deep. Dean’s mouth is a fuzzy humid heat that fogs up Sam’s brain, and Sam keeps trying to breathe in little hitches that turn into growls when they get past his throat. He props himself up on his elbows, puts a hand to Dean’s cheek where he can feel a rhythm building. Dean leans slightly into the touch and his eyes don’t leave Sam’s face. He is better at this now, which maybe Sam will think about later.

Sam comes sooner than either of them were expecting, gasping and grabbing at the sheets. It would be embarrassing except Dean snarls, “Sammy, fuck,” and scrambles to get his fly open, face pressed to the crease where Sam’s hip meets his leg.

“No way do you get to-” Sam whines, tugging on Dean’s shoulders, and Dean kicks his pants down to his knees and crawls his way up to bite Sam’s lip and grind himself against Sam’s thigh. Sam clutches at Dean’s back, his ass, and Dean whimpers a little bit and redoubles his efforts. He grunts with each thrust and loses the concentration it takes to kiss, just breathes against Sam’s cheek, mouths clumsily at his ear.

Sam finally worms a hand in to touch Dean’s cock, and Dean comes just like that, like someone knocked the wind out of him.

The bed is too small for Dean to move without falling off of it, and he curls in on top of Sam, his head tucked underneath Sam’s chin. Sam rubs his back absently. The new morning light is thin and pale and washes everything out. Dean’s ribs and knees are poking him. Sam is the consistency of thin cotton, stretched and soft.

It lasts exactly as long as it takes Dean to catch his breath. Dean rolls off the bed, staggers to his feet and stretches his arms over his head. Says, “Damn,” long and appreciative but already losing the postcoital lassitude. “That’s one way to jumpstart your morning, huh Sammy? Way better than Wheaties.”

“Shut up,” Sam moans, throwing his arm over his face.

Dean chuckles as he pulls up his pants, and the sound itches in the base of Sam’s spine. “Dude, you’ve never had stamina.” He scrubs a hand through his hair, slaps his thigh. “You’re gonna need a shower before we go.”

Sam cracks an eye open. “Before we go where?”

Dean’s smile doesn’t fade, but it hovers in place. “Before we hit the road, dumbass. Check out the rest of that family.”

For a moment Sam feels almost peaceful. But it’s the peaceful of seeing a knife in your shoulder, when your body knows how bad the situation is and clears out your mind so you can cope. “And then what? We drive back to Dad? Go back to hunting? I drop out of school and we chalk up Stanford as a little case of adolescent rebellion?”

He sits up. Dean is staring at him, something hard and luminous and shuttered in the cast of his jaw, the corners of his eyes. And Sam knows this is the end of their common ground. This is the line neither of them will forgive the other for being unable to cross.

“That was the plan,” Dean says slowly. “But apparently you’ve got other ideas.”

Sam rests his hands on his knees. “It’s not like anything’s changed.”

“No?” says Dean. “That sure is convenient. Otherwise you’d have to think of another excuse, wouldn’t you, Sammy?”

Sam stands up, finds Dean’s jacket off the floor and shoves it at him. “Get out.”

“I’m gone.” Their hands don’t touch over the leather and even though Dean slams the door hard enough to rock it on its hinges, Sam doesn’t hear any footsteps receding into the morning.

**

Ironically, he ends up missing class.

Sam crawled into bed because the pillow still smelled like Dean, and after he got tired of punching it he must have dozed off.

When he wakes up at 3:27 in the afternoon, Sam stares at the ceiling, thinking about polio and amputation and what excuse he’ll use when he emails his professors. He thinks about how Dean played hooky eight days out of ten when he was twelve years old, thinks about how Dad went ballistic when he found out, how Sam had drawn Dean a picture to cheer him up over being grounded that Dean kept in the bottom of his duffel for months.

Sam scrubs his hand over his face, gets out of bed. Takes a shower, brushes his teeth, eats a cereal bar in his room. He gets dressed, wastes a few minutes trying to fix his hair, gives up, takes a breath.

Goes across the hall. Knocks on a door.

He’s relieved when Jessica answers it and not her roommate. She’s wearing glasses and holding a pencil, and she blinks at him in surprise. “Sam! Oh! Oh, hi.”

“Hi,” Sam says. He thinks he’s smiling but he’s not sure. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about the way I acted the other day at the, you know…”

“No, don’t be,” Jessica says. “It was a weird time. I shouldn’t have.”

“No, it was fine. Better than fine, really. I was just wondering, actually, if you wanted to, well…” Sam gives up on not being a dork and just goes for it. “Maybe get coffee or something sometime.”

She really is beautiful like this, when she looks happy. “I’d really like that. Actually, I’ve been wrapped up in research methods and haven’t eaten yet, if you’re in the mood for a late lunch.”

“Yeah, that sounds great,” Sam says. “I’m starving, actually. Let me just go get my jacket and I’ll be right back.”

Sam smiles and he means it, he's pretty sure.

“Okay,” says Jessica. “I’ll be over here, waiting.”


End file.
